Zombies
by KeyPea
Summary: A survivor gives her account of Dunwall's deadly disease problem, set pre-game when the plague is at its peak and weepers choke the streets. (M for graphic violence.)
1. Chapter 1

Dunwall was in the grip of the plague. It had already claimed many lives, and the City Watch patrolled the streets and enforced curfews to try to keep the survivors safe from weepers- horrid zombies that would sense your presence and lunge straight for you. Many houses were boarded up and the dead lay in the streets in their wrappings. The occasional train or boat would come for them, but mostly their rotting carcasses were left to feed the rats. They walked no longer, therefore they were low on the list of priorities of the City Watch. It was the walkers, the weepers, that meant the centre of the city was death to any who dared tread there.

It was safer on the outskirts, closer to the countryside. The City Watch hadn't been nearly as strict here and mostly the houses were just abandoned, but not boarded up. The homes of the rich were never boarded up. It made it easier to survive for individuals who had escaped the rat plague but had nowhere else to go. Individuals like me.

I didn't travel alone. There was a young man in his early twenties with me; my lover. As we'd both escaped it would have seemed callous to abandon him now, and I have to admit the arrangement had its benefits. We watched out for each other, helped gather food and find water, and if it were necessary, fight. Like I said, the districts closer to the countryside had largely escaped the dead that threatened the city and choked its streets. We only saw the occasional weeper, and they were easy enough to avoid, if they hadn't seen you. We had no guns, besides, guns were loud and would bring unwanted attention down on you, either from more weepers or the wrath of the City Watch trying to keep order in the chaos.

OOO

We were scavenging houses along a wide street, systematically moving along each property and looting anything useful we could find, when I saw weepers approaching from the other end of the street. I was on watch, sitting on the porch roof using a spyglass I'd liberated from some other rich bastard's house, and at first I couldn't tell if they were other survivors from the glare of the bright street. The sun was out for once, but my blood ran cold just as soon as their shambling gait gave them away, and I leapt down off that roof and steered my lover inside the house.

"Check the doors and windows upstairs," I instructed him. "We're waiting this one out."

There was a chill about the house that was disproportionate to the heat outside, and I didn't know whether it was because the whale oil had run out in the house or if it was my shaking body. I double-checked the front door and the windows to reassure myself that nothing was getting in, then perched my weapon on a counter, in easy reach, and hunkered down against the wall.

Soon my lover joined me and told me that the house was secure from upstairs. We didn't speak, listening out for any sounds. Weepers were unpredictable- in the final throes of the plague they retained enough brain and human instinct to look for food sources, shelters and the like, but their bloodlust could be overwhelming.

A breeze blew over us and I complained of the room being draughty, before realisation of what this meant sank in and I froze. There was one door I'd overlooked- the glassroom at the back of the property. My heart started pounding and my throat was dry, I was frozen to the spot with fear but I just had to know if that door was closed. My lover followed me in horror as I ripped back the curtain to the glassroom, and I groaned and cursed as I saw that the door was wide open, and felt like throwing up as I saw a weeper shambling straight towards it.

"Get the door, quick!" I moaned, my legs failing me and rooting me to the spot. My lover lunged for the door and tried to slam it shut, but the weeper was too close and strong, and they danced a tug-o-war each side of the handle as the weeper tried to pull it open, and my lover tried to pull it closed. Adrenaline surged when I saw the weeper might be winning, handing back the reins of muscle control to me. My heart was still pounding but my head was clearer as the weeper's strength overtook my lover's and it wrenched the door open, squealing in triumph at the smell of two pieces of fresh meat.

My lover darted backwards and managed to avoid the raking claws of the weeper as it struggled with the doorstep, giving me a second to grope for the counter, never daring to take my eyes off the thing in front of us. My hand closed around the cold metal of my weapon as the weeper succeeded in stepping over the threshold. I took a deep breath.

"What are you going to d-" my lover shouted, but I think the answer became clear as I wielded the curved farming sickle, rage written all over my face that this vessel of disease would dare threaten us. I swung it as hard as I could, and it sliced cleanly through the weeper's neck, taking its horrible head right off.

"Yes!" I shouted, as the head rolled away and the body dropped, green bile spewing from the neck hole. My lover had turned a similar shade of green, and he was practically hyperventilating as he gabbled, "You've just beheaded a weeper with a farming sickle. Oh shit. You've beheaded a weeper with a farming sickle." He had trouble separating weepers from humans, whereas at their advanced stages of disease, I saw them as ignorant zombies who would kill you or just nibble on you a bit and pass on their plague given half the chance, a fate that was quite frankly worse than death.

I ignored him and kicked all the remains out of the door and finally slammed it shut myself. "Well that's that taken care of," I said calmly, the adrenaline still prevalent in my veins. My legs trembled, reminding me that without it, I'd probably be dead in a heap on the floor right now with a weeper feasting on my flesh. I shuddered and went to find something to clean off the sickle with. I'd be keeping it a lot closer from now on.

OOO


	2. Chapter 2

After the incident with the weeper in the glasshouse, the farming sickle that had saved my life never left my side. When we found it I had been all in favour of trading it later on, but now it was going nowhere. It had proved its worth a million ways. However, our next encounter with the weepers wasn't as unexpected as it was deeply disturbing.

We'd moved closer to the city centre to flog the fruits of our scavenging to a few survivors, and hopefully find more whilst we were at it. The City Watch were keeping up regular patrols, which half terrified, half reassured me. Regular gunshots could be heard; weepers, presumably. Things were bad, and whole areas were starting to be cleared, although the bodies of the dead were still piled high in the streets. If you wanted a proper burial for a member of your family, you did it yourself.

We were checking out an apartment block close to sundown, not long before curfew. Apartment blocks were risky- you had to break into each unit and there was no guarantee that the inhabitants were quite dead yet. We'd been lucky today though, and had worked our way down from the top systematically, finding nothing more threatening than a rat or two and picking up a decent haul of food.

It was on the first floor that we heard the unmistakable cry of a child, and my blood ran cold. It would attract any hungry weeper in the vicinity who would then inevitably tear the kid apart. Perhaps it was maternal instinct, but I kicked down the door with enough force to tear it off the hinges and send it halfway across the room. I gave a cursory scan of the apartment, feeling my lover covering my back, before stepping into the front room where the cries were coming from.

The place was a complete mess- someone had obviously left in a hurry, not even bothering to close the window where curtains fluttered in the breeze. The cries came from a basket near the sofa, and I stepped over there to check it out.

"Oh, _shit,_" I whispered as my eyes fell on the cradle. I covered my mouth with my hand to try and avoid losing whatever I'd last eaten.

"What is it?"

"It's vile," I replied, moving over to the window to try and suck some fresh air into my suffocated lungs. I heard my lover move over to the cradle and he gave a sharp intake of breath.

"He's..."

"Infected." I finished, spinning around. "We should kill it."

"It? For fuck's sake, it's a baby boy! We should at least try to save him, perhaps elixir...?"

"Have you ever seen elixir work on a weeper?"

"No, but..."

"Then do the kind thing and snap its neck!" I shouted, brandishing my weapon at the cradle. The baby thrashed and writhed as it sensed humans near, its horrid eyes bloody with disease and its clothes and face covered in the green fluid humans threw up in the advanced stages of the plague. It gargled and moaned and I turned away, not bearing to look at it any longer. At least it explained why there were no hungry weepers around- they did not attack their own.

"This was someone's son," my lover said quietly. "Would you have killed our son?"

I ignored him and stared out of the window. "It's nearly sundown," I said. "We have to leave. Kill it or leave it, it's up to you. The plague will finish it off soon enough either way if the eyes are bleeding."

I left, not wanting to see which choice my lover made. As I reached the street I heard strangled sobbing coming from the upstairs window and I shook my head. It seemed my lover had learned a lesson about what kindness truly was in these times of war and plague.

OOO

We headed back out to the countryside. The city was as good as dead, and it was too dangerous to stay whilst there were still so many weepers. I made plans for us to travel to my grandfather's farm- it seems I'd inherited my stubborn streak from him, as he'd refused to leave the place when the rest of my family had fled. I hadn't seen him since the start of the plague, but I felt sure news would have reached me of his demise if it had come to that.

The City Watch were reluctant, but eventually they had to let us leave, and we managed to hitch a ride on one of the trains out to the countryside. We were well aware that half the carriages were filled with the bodies of the dead. The other half was filled with empty whale oil tanks. It was becoming a commodity, and Dunwall was running out of it.

We hitched as far as the trains would allow us, then walked the rest of the way to my grandfather's farm. It was a quiet journey- eerily quiet. We didn't see a soul, weeper or otherwise, on the way. Most of the houses were abandoned but I resisted the temptation to raid them just yet- it was getting close to nightfall and I wanted to arrive in once piece.

My grandfather wasn't in the least bit surprised to see me, and I wasn't surprised to see him in one piece either. He'd been a seaman before his retirement, out on the whaling ships in all weathers, and it had made him a survivor. He'd hoarded an impressive amount of potted whale meat, jellied eels and other tinned goods, and that first night we had a feast the likes of which we hadn't seen since the plague began. I slept better than I had in weeks.

OOO

The next day I climbed the winding stairs of the house many times to get into the roof space and fetch down many items from where my grandfather had hidden them. Amongst them were a surprising amount of whale oil tanks. He certainly wasn't rich enough to have so many, but I guess he still had some contacts from his days on the ships who could hook him up and keep him in power.

My lover was making himself useful as well, moving between us both to offer a hand with chores. In the late afternoon, I yelled for him to give me a hand with the tank I was fetching down, only to receive no response. I lugged it down the stairs myself to find him standing in the front room, eyes glued to the window with a look of utter horror on his face.

"Didn't you hear me shouting?" I asked irritably.

"They're here." His face was bloodless.

I looked impatiently out of the window to see what had captured his undivided attention only to be rooted to the spot myself. I couldn't speak for a moment until I started screaming for my grandfather to come and take a look, NOW.

He shuffled in, holding another huge tin of eels, and we three stood at the window and watched the weepers come towards the house. They were still quite a way off, but their strength lay in their numbers. It could only be described as a horde, and with the noise we had been making, there was no way they couldn't have heard it. They were coming straight for us.

My grandfather was the first to react, snapping to attention and giving us orders, all whilst standing in his carpet slippers and still holding the can. "We may be able to hold them off long enough to escape, but there's no way we can fight them all," he declared. I believed him- killing the one in the glasshouse had taken enough strength out of me before.

"If you have elixir, take it," he continued, never taking his eyes off the window. "They'll be here soon. Once they sense life, they'll run."

OOO

He wasn't wrong. When the first weeper smashed its arm through the window, and I heard another at the back of the house, I shoved my lover towards the stairs. "Up." I instructed. "It's safer."

I backed towards the stairs myself, wondering what was taking my grandfather so long. He appeared in the hall, dragging the whale oil canister behind him and with that damn tin still under his arm. We could hear the weepers now, hear them in the house, and their groans struck fear into the centre of my heart. He looked me dead in the face.

"Go." He said. "I'll hold them off."

"No, you can't!" I shouted, feeling my lover tug on my arm to get me to go. "We've survived this long, this can't be it!"

"Go, right now, and don't you dare look back." He ordered. "GO!"

Weepers were flooding the hallway, squealing triumphantly at finding the life they so craved. My lover all but dragged me up the stairs as the horde surrounded my grandfather, the ones at the back pushing those at the front over, the hallway becoming a sea of disease, weepers crawling all over each other, and all over my grandfather, covered in blood. I saw him lift the can high above his head, and make eye contact with me one last time before he nodded and I was lifted off my feet by my lover. The last thing I saw was my grandfather swinging the can down onto the canister of whale oil.

The explosion rocked the whole house and dust rained down from the ceiling. I could hear bricks and wood falling, and a screaming that was probably more weepers but could just have easily been me. We went right up to the top of the house and backed into the master bedroom. I could see more hands clawing at the base of the stairs. The explosion had cleared a good load out, but they were a horde, and it was never going to get them all. I heard my lover fumble for the window behind me and slide it up.

"Come on!" He shouted. "We can climb onto the roof."

A weariness swept over me. I was tired of the plague, tired of running, and tired of scavenging. What sort of life was this? Ruled by the iron fist of the City Watch, about to be blockaded to die as vessels of plague, and for what? A life of running away, running towards a home that we'd never have again.

I reached out and gave my lover a leg up from the windowsill until I could hear his hands scrabble and grab a hold on the roof. Then I took my last vial of elixir from my pocket and stared at it. It meant survival, but for what? My grandfather was dead, and the rest of my family could have been any one of those weepers that had killed him.

I suddenly stuffed the elixir into my lovers pocket, and with one last shove, pushed him all the way up and onto the roof.

"What are you doing?!" He was panicked. "Give me your hand, quickly, I can pull you up!"

"No." I told him, quite calmly. "Run, whilst you have the chance. Live."

The time had come. The weepers had made it into the bedroom. I climbed up on the windowsill, and roared at my lover to leave. I could hear him sobbing, scrabbling away over the roof, but he never took his eyes off me. The first weeper I hit with the scythe went down like a sack of bricks, and I managed to take two more with me before they swarmed me and I teetered on the edge of the window.

I felt the air rushing past me, but it didn't matter anymore. I'd escaped the weepers, escaped the bleeding from the eyes and the throwing up of my insides, escaped the plague. I was a survivor.

I was flying, I was falling.

I was free.


End file.
